


Minds and Hearts

by Dedicate Kiwicrocus (cranky__crocus)



Series: SMACKDOWN '11 Round Two - Team Discipline [5]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, Goldenlake, smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cranky__crocus/pseuds/Dedicate%20Kiwicrocus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lark recalled living as a melody.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minds and Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Written right before SMACKDOWN (using the same prompt table) for Goldenlake: fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com

            Lark recalled living as a melody. Her mother had once told her, after she led the tumblers’ march through Khapik in Tharios—swirling her _yaskedasi_ veil above her head with pride through the Pleasure District—that someday, she may wish to be a harmony.

            “What’s a harmony?” little Lark, before vows and adolescence, had questioned as she inspected the handiwork of a window-tossed, broken doll she found on the street. Its imitation _yaskedasi_ veil was stained red with dye or blood, but she loved it immediately and babbled to her mother over it. “Alina told me you always want the melody. So I think you’d want to _be_ the melody, if you were going to be anything, but I really just want to be me—Paraskeve!”

            Her mother had smiled, long dark lashes framing patient eyes; she stroked her daughter’s black curls, so like her own.

            “Yes, my little Paraskeve, you are quite a person to be.” She kissed the girl’s forehead. “You are the pride of our troupe—our little tumbling melody. Melody and harmony…” the woman considered her explanation as she sat back on the wooden bench and grasped her knees with one hand, the other set to stroking Paraskeve’s hair. She watched the dirty window atop the canteen. At last she smiled. “Do you remember the song Papito and I used to sing to you, about the shooting stars?”

            “You still sing it to me every night!” Paraskeve giggled and rolled her eyes—Alina had taught her that as well—before bumping her mother’s shoulder with the doll. Regardless, Paras’ eyes were large and intrigued as she gazed up.

            “You are right, little one—”

            “I’m not little anymore, Mamita!”

            She laughed. “No, no you are not. But you are not too big to sit in my lap.”

            In one short instant her mother hopped smoothly from the bench and fell with grace—for that is how it looked to Paras—to the floor, where she leaned against the bench and beckoned to her daughter. Paras shared a conspiratorial look with her doll, rolled her eyes once, and slid to the floor. Her mother tucked the girl’s long limbs into her lap and the girl’s fuzzy head neatly beneath her slender chin.

            “Big-little one, do you remember the times I sang the starsong to you alone, without Papito?”

            “Ye—no, Mamita, you should remind me.”

            Paras felt the laughter through her mother’s chest, deep and rich, a sound she could not copy no matter how long she practised. She thought her mother had a bigger heart than she did, since Papito had told her that that was where love and laughter and songs came from. She knew her mother’s heart was big, for Mamita took a deep breath through her laughter and sang about the stars falling from the heavens and the goddess Onini collecting them in a basket to create a garden of star-flowers. Paras joined in when it got to the parts that repeated.

            “There, my big-little one!” Mamita exclaimed, smiling and brushing one thumb over Paras’ cheek. “When you sing with me, you sing the melody with me—it’s the part that everyone tends to know and people tend to focus on. You are a melody.”

            Paras searched her noodle—Papito was silly, calling her head a noodle—for the word her mother had used earlier. “So what’s a harminy?”

            “Harmony. Last night Papito sang the song with me, no?”

            “Yes.” Paras answered half because she knew that to be the answer, and half because life with her friends had taught her that if someone said ‘no’ it was best to say ‘yes’ and if someone said ‘yes’ it was best to say ‘no’—and then pray for a tousle, and pray harder to be on the winning side. Then you got to rule the area for a while over other groups of kids, and sometimes they dropped their coins and knickknacks. Plus _yaskedasi_ kids didn’t tend to tousle hard, since their parents were always nagging at them to _take care of their bodies—they’re instruments_. But Paras thought instruments were metal or wood. Then, if she could be a part of a song, surely she could be an instrument too.

            Mamita was staring at her. That usually meant she had been lost again—lost in the old noodle, as Papito would say. “Sorry Mamita.”

            “Your head is filled with wonders, big-little melody; never apologise for that. Bodies wear out but that mind of yours is gold.”

            Paras’ eyes widened. “ _Gold?_ _Really?_ ”

            “Worth as much—the same way your body is not made of _draecham_ , but it earns you _draecham_ in how you use it.” Paras considered this and nodded, accepting it as truth—her body earned coins, but was not made of coins; perhaps her mind could earn coins someday without _being_ coins. Plus her mind didn’t clink around like a merchant’s coin purse. Mamita was smiling at her again and at last murmured, “Little Paras, would you like to know about harmony?”

            “Yes. What’s harmony?”

            “When your father sings with me, he doesn’t sing it the way you just did, does he?”

            “No, he sings it different, but it still sounds nice.” Paras stroked her new doll’s hair the way her mother stroked hers. “But sometimes he sings like you.”

            “That’s harmony. Sometimes it sounds the same, but sometimes it’s a little different; it sounds good with the melody. It strengthens the music even when people don’t always notice it there. Harmony works with the melody like friends—a little different, sometimes a lot different, but working well together.”

            Paras leaned back into her mother and spread her legs out and over the woman’s lap. The girl sighed, contented-kitten style, and wrapped her mother’s arms around her. “If you and Papito were music, who would be the harmony?”

            Mamita laughed; Paras smiled at the vibrations once more. Maybe her mother’s heart was harmony, if it was so strong.

            “Papito and I switch. Sometimes I am the melody, and he strengthens me; sometimes he is the melody, and I draw attention to his beauty.”

            “But you’re beautiful too, Mamita! Everyone says so!”

            “True,” Mamita answered through a grin. She kissed Paras on one high cheek-bone and craned to show her daughter a quick wink, which drew a laugh. “But I don’t need Papito to draw attention to it, do I? I can do that myself. You do the same, Paraskeve, without knowing—that is why our troupe thinks you are a melody.”

            “So why would I want to be a harmony?” The girl asked, puzzled. Being the melody seemed more fun—everyone paid attention to her onstage so she made more coins for the troupe. Would she do that as a harmony?

            “Someday, you may find another person’s song to be so strong and beautiful that you wish only to enrich it, rather than overpower it with your own—and if you are truly lucky, that person will share their melody with you.”

            “And I could share my melody with them?”

            Mamita smiled into Paras’ hair. “Yes. As Papito says: minds of melody, hearts of harmony. My Paraskeve, you have both—someday your heart may lead you to harmony.”

            “But my heart isn’t very big yet. I’ve got love and laughter, but no song.”

            The sun was setting over the Pleasure District of Tharios then, lighting the room in gold, and breath-stealing enough despite its daily regularity to temporarily overpower the dust on the windows and dirt on the floors. Mamita’s explanation of the size of little Lark’s heart lasted until their evening performance, during which she played the Flying Tumbler—thrown through the air—and earned her troupe a hefty bag of coins.

            Mostly from that night, she remembered ‘minds of melody and hearts of harmony’—as well as her mother’s smile and the sunsets of Tharios.

 

 

Rosethorn was grinning at her, laugh lines around the woman’s eyes betraying the laughter that did not leave her lungs. Lark knew in an instant that she had been lost within the breadth of her dreams and memories—or noodle, as beloved Papito would have said.

            “Sorry?” Lark inquired at last, grinning sheepishly over her lap loom.

            “I complimented the melody you were humming,” Rosethorn repeated, grin growing, “but if it’s so forgettable I could take it back.”

            “Not possible. You know my rule on compliments.”

            “Yes, that saying you found on the streets of Khapik, wasn’t it? ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers?’ Do you have a jar filled with my praises filed away in that cloud of hair of yours, Lark?”

            Lark’s lips quirked up at one corner; she sent a free head of thread to tickle Rosethorn’s arm where she tallied. “Does my hair look big enough for _that?_ ”

            “No, just your head,” Rosie countered, swiping chalk down Lark’s cheek. “Sing that song again, with the tune you were humming—the one about Onini and star-flowers. The idea of star-flower garden is appealing.”

            Lark began to sing over her work. Hers was not the finest of voices—not as fine as her body had once been, which itself still paled in comparison to her mind—but served her well enough to sing her songs, which tended to be more about the stories anyway. When she realised that Rosethorn was singing along, she left the woman with the melody and sang the harmony that she could remember her Papito singing all around the Pebbled Sea and beyond. Rosie faltered for a line but continued strong when she realised what had occurred.

            She smiled at Lark as they finished the last line on the same note: Onini star-gazing in her garden of flowers.

            “Minds of melody, hearts of harmony,” Lark murmured, clasping Rosie’s hand in hers for a beat before returning hers to her loom. Her companion made little outward notice of this but Lark could see the slightest flush of red over the woman’s cheeks.

            Lark recalled living as a melody. Her heart told her now, after falling curls-over-toes for this prickly-pear of a woman—husk of thorns and brambles opening into tender tides of compassion—that today, she was glad to be a harmony.

            She was lucky, too: Rosethorn may have attested to her death bed and back that things had to be done _her way_ , but she shared her melody and took an interest in Lark’s. For as long as there was a Rosie to know and cherish, Lark would gladly enrich her song: strengthening, enhancing, providing depth and complexity to what was already beautiful and strong without her.

            But when Rosie smiled, Lark knew they both preferred her there. And what a melodious and harmonious pair they made.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! (:


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